Sorry for the dormancy: RoboCup 2009

Sorry for the recent dormancy, readers… I was participating in the RoboCup 2009, Austria. I was part of my country’s first ever team to the RoboCup Rescue League (team SAVIOUR), and probably the first to any part of the RoboCup. The project site is here at www.projectsaviour.co.cc.

As for me, my regular blogging will resume. Yeah, I do it for interest, but my readers keep coming back, don’t they? 🙂

A World Beyond

Imagine a journey into the depths of knowledge,
Into the tiniest throes of reality;
See the worlds spin around,
Feel the forces that are beyond mentality.

Enter a grand new dimension,
Where time and space merge;
Watch instances of grandeur
And the great energies surge.

This is an immense creation of God,
Yet He has put in uncertainties abound;
There are vibrations, hummings and explosions,
But not the smallest shake of sound.

Here you ride the waves of light,
Or see it, bit by bit;
Here you navigate oceans of darkness,
Or face disintegrations, if you see fit.

Tiny entities exert powers beyond,
Power great and humongous;
In this existence of miracles,
Miniature oft wins colossus.

Logic rules these lands,
Though chaos, too, exists;
There are no frontiers here,
Just mystery shrouding mists.

All that was not a wondrous dream,
Or some ridiculous encrypted code;
In sweet words, it was the glorious realm of Physics,
Where the greatest minds abode.

– Muhammad Fahd Waseem

Faster than light – Impossible, even if Sci-Fi says so

Once upon a time, I was watching some movies, and I realized how many sci-fi movies rely on the concept of faster than light travel. This was many years ago (I was hardly into high school then). I wrote, at that time, a small article about why faster than light travel is impossible. While there are many better and interesting (and more accurate) explanations that I could now provide (some are presented on my other site, Super Physics), I feel that the old simple explanation still stands. So I just thought I should post it, for lack of anything better to do this Saturday…

“There was once a lady named Conway,
Who traveled faster than light,
She departed one day, in a relative way,
And returned on the previous night.”

Those of us who watch Star Trek, or are interested in Sci-Fi are already familiar with the concept of starships traveling faster then the speed of light, which is approximately 300,000,000 m/s, the fastest speed currently known to man kind. Although the concept is amazing, one must wonder which energy source would power such a ship. To answer the question certain facts must be considered:

• All the energy in the universe is not sufficient to propel even an electron to the speed of light.
• Objects get heavier as they approach the speed of light, eventually they become infinitely dense.

The solution offered by many theoretical physicists is simple, just beyond the light barrier consists a field of super-cooled space-time energy called the ‘Speed Force”. This energy is unlimited, and if harnessed properly it is enough to propel matter beyond the speed of light. As far as density problems are concerned, new theories suggest that when objects are traveling at ½ or ¾ of the speed of the speed of light, they enter a space-time distortion field, and to some extend they no longer exist in our universe. Properties such as friction do not exist and laws and equations of motion no longer apply. Other wise an electron accelerated to .999999999999999999 times the speed of light would hit you with the impact of a truck! Another interesting concept is the slowing down of clocks, at half the speed of light clocks would slow down by 15%, at the speed of light clocks would completely stop. Even on the space shuttles we have today, clocks tick less than one ten-millionth of a percent slower than their counterparts on Earth. Sadly the solution is to build clocks in an atmosphere that is traveling at the needed speed.

Another mind boggling concept is that pocket universes can be created if one collides with the centre of the universe at the speed of light, the collision creates bubbles of super-cooled space-time that evolve into universes. Some say that at the point of formation, God can be found. Religious scholars regard this as heresy and physicists as concepts impossible to prove with experiments or equations.

The Large Hadron Collider opens – a great day for science

Today, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva was tested for the first time.

It was run on very low power: the full functionality is still possibly a year away. Nevertheless, the accelerator worked well.

The test particles were protons. They were accelerated in a clockwise direction – the anti clockwise direction is yet to be tested. A successful test of that would mean that there are no major problems.

So what does this mean for science, and physics in particular? To begin with, scientists now have more power to smash atoms and bring out their innards than ever before. Acceleration of heavy nucleons into the multi-TeV ranges means that the very core subatomic and subnucleic particles have a chance of showing themselves. One such particle that scientists hope to find is the Higgs boson – if found, it could be the answer to one of the longest standing physics questions: what is the smallest building block in nature?

Moreover, at the highest power, the LHC could emulate the Big Bang effect, albeit on a microscopic level. That alone has the potential to redefine our understanding of physics.

No matter what is finds, or fails to find, this LHC stands as the cumulative product of the work of thousands of scientist from across the globe, and it could reclassify our understanding of the world, the galaxy, the universe, and perhaps most importantly, even us.

More reading here.

My other site @ Super Physics

I think I may have forgotten to mention properly: I have another site at http://superphysics.netfirms.com. It is about high level physics – you will get a good idea about it if you visit it (and are interested in physics, of course). I developed it long ago, but I confess it has been neglected lately.

And unlike this blog, it is harder to maintain because of the necessary authenticity of all I put in.

Nevertheless, any ideas for future updates are more than welcome.

Beautiful phrases…

Who says quotes about physics and maths are always funny or cheesy? Here is one that is actually very smooth:

Physics and Maths are the undercurrent of life. Why? Because physics is time, and math is the explanation.
And together, they are the phenomenon of the earth.